


Blacksmith's Hands

by Lokei



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-07-07
Updated: 2006-07-07
Packaged: 2017-10-18 21:57:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/193734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lokei/pseuds/Lokei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Will POV missing-scenes fic. Elizabeth has handed over the medallion and vanished above decks, leaving Will behind as the Interceptor races to avoid the approaching Black Pearl. Will broods. *dry chuckle* Who would have guessed?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blacksmith's Hands

The sound of her footsteps on the deck receded, leaving Will alone in the hold to the solo accompaniment of the _Interceptor’s_ creaking hull. The warship groaned under the pressure of full sail and its broken grumbles felt like they could have come from Will himself.

His hand stung where it had slammed the table and he focused on the tiny pain for a moment to delay the inevitable realization of the greater one. He curled his fingers, one by one, around the cursed golden coin and its chain, still warm from where it had rested around Elizabeth’s neck.

As soon as he noticed it, Will wished the feeling in his fingers had vanished entirely instead—to think of the chain was to think of where it hung, to think of where it hung was to think of the woman, and to think of the woman was to think of the kiss that lingered unaccepted in the air between them. To think of the kiss was to think of the doubt, and Will did not want to face the doubt just yet.

Instead, he studied his hands, deep eyes contemplating the long fingers, the calluses, the straining tendons where he gripped the pirate medallion. Blacksmith’s hands…though he had called them rough just minutes ago, they were far from unfeeling. They were the hands of a craftsman, the hands of a man who experienced life through the skill carried within them. He could tell the balance of a blade as soon as he touched a sword handle, he could spot the weakest link in a chain just by running his fingers over it, and his feather touch could find irregularities in a rod of iron that would ruin the finished product.

His hands remembered every detail of the last twenty minutes, and Will closed his eyes futilely against the sensory overload.

With an effort, Will forced himself to unclench his fist, the echo of the rough oar handles still on his palms. It had been an awkward row from the island cave to the Interceptor. Will, acutely conscious of all the questions Elizabeth was not asking, had focused on rowing. Elizabeth, perhaps trying not to ask questions, had sat there grimly throwing the spare oars overboard with her unsliced hand. Their conversation, such as it was, had consisted entirely of the necessities of the moment, though Will had enjoyed placing a protective arm around her in the face of the pirate crew, feeling a kind of wicked thrill at the intimacy of near skin to skin which their damp clothing provided.

Once aboard and safely out of earshot, Elizabeth had demanded explanations, and Will had given them, his own hands safely tucked away as he feared having crossed some boundary, over which they might never return. At Elizabeth’s exasperated and inexpert attempts at bandaging her own hand fumbled, however, Will could no longer help himself and caught her slight and trembling fingers between his own, hope buoyed by her strange tale of having borrowed his name.

His fingertips tingled now as they had then, registering the difference between the rough cloth bandage and her smooth skin, the delicate feel of the bones of her fingers and the way they lay so trustingly between his own…the way they had twitched in an irrepressible reaction when she had asked him, in _that_ voice, not to stop.

 _Stop?_ His breath had stopped in that moment, and his heart, and quite possibly his common sense as well, for it was then that he had leaned in for that kiss—it had seemed, as Sparrow would have said, ‘the opportune moment.’ Powered by a will of its own, Will’s hand had drifted up to cup her flawless cheek, the back of his fingers brushing aside her damp hair like the touch of salt-dewed cobweb.

And she had pushed him away.

Will hadn’t comprehended it at first as she pulled his hand down—caught in the moment he had let himself linger there at the line of her bodice, the back of his hand burning with the sense of the nearness of her. He blushed at the recollection as the blood rushed to his hand once more and it burned again in guilt and frustrated anticipation.

Then there was the cold, hard, terrible solidity of the medallion in his grasp as she dangled it before him, the chain warm from her body heat but the chill of the golden medallion barely affected. Even now as he clutched it spasmodically, the cursed gold was as cold as the iron of a pre-dawn forge, and twice as malignant.

Will had no doubt the coin was cursed. Hadn’t it just lost him Elizabeth in a way more irrevocable than any difference in social status between them ever could? Hadn’t his heritage, which he had once thought lost, or at best safely behind him, returned to throw a shadow over all he thought his life had meant?

His father was a pirate. Will himself was of the blood of outlaws and scallywags, men he deemed without honor and without honesty. And in his own foolish honesty, Will had just seen himself deal the deathblow to any hope he had ever carried of winning Elizabeth.

 _“It wasn’t your blood they needed. It was my father’s blood. My blood. The blood of a pirate.”_

She hadn’t seemed surprised. She was a smart woman, one of the many reasons why he adored her—if Jack Sparrow had figured it out, so would she. Instead her eyes had shone with tears and she had left him alone. Alone as he could be, with only Sparrow’s voice echoing in his ears.

 _“Pirate is in your blood boy, and someday you’ll have to square with that.”_

Will gripped the medallion so hard it left the indentation of the skull on his palm. What choices his father had made did not need to be his own. Pirate or not, his mother had loved his father, so he must have been a good man. Will’s own unlawful deeds had been done for love—was Will any less of a good man? Might he not still be a better one?

If he could never have Elizabeth, so be it. His honor was in the choices he made, and to whatever end it led him, Will placed his own promise on the talisman resting on his palm.

 _If I cannot escape my blood, let me turn curse to blessing. Though it take my very life, I will use my blood to protect her. Nothing else matters._

Will opened his fist one last time and let the medallion slip reverently through his fingers to land with a quiet clink against the tabletop. From above he could hear the scurrying sounds of frantic activity, which could mean only one thing. The Black Pearl was catching up—the end had come rather sooner than he had hoped.

He sighed and looked down at his hands once more.

 _Blacksmith’s hands…I know they’re rough._

 _But may they be strong enough to do what must be done._

Without a glance at the table, Will climbed the ladder and threw open the hatch to the Caribbean’s uncompromising sunlight.


End file.
